The Epic Craziness of Otto Preminger

[MrMidwest]

Posted: 1/31/14 at 12:49pm

There are so many stories, but let's just start with this one, since it's so good.


"In the mid 1970s, Otto Preminger was making a film that critics later called 'Rosedud'. His best years and work - Anatomy Of A Murder, Fallen Angel - were behind him. But he still treated his cast like they didn't deserve to smell his ****.

Kim Cattrall, then a teenager, was in her first professional film role. She remembers Preminger repeatedly shouting phrases like 'Vat are you doing!? You think you are actors!?' Cattrall said Preminger picked on someone new every day.

It took the scenic designer to stand up to him. He had a number tattooed on his wrist from his time in a concentration camp. Cattrall said he walked up to Preminger and said he couldn't work with the director because his screaming reminded him so much of the traumatic abuse of the camp guards that he was suffering nightmares. 'It was really one of the first time that he (Preminger) shut the hell up', Cattrall said on Desert Island Discs."


How to Silence a Maniac

Updated On: 1/31/14 at 12:49 PM

[After Eight]

Posted: 1/31/14 at 1:45pm

What better occasion than Carol Channing's birthday to recollect Preminger's monument of epic craziness, Skidoo!

What a trip!

[FishermanBob]

Posted: 1/31/14 at 1:48pm

An old school director gone almost 30 years who shouted "Vat are you doing?" at his actors???

Wow, that is epic craziness, yo.

[adamgreer]

Posted: 1/31/14 at 1:58pm

In his book, "Back to the Bat Cave," Adam West calls him "insufferable" and a "terror." He speaks about the one episode Preminger appeared on (as Mr. Freeze) and what a nightmare it was. Preminger berated Madge Blake (who played Aunt Harriet) in front of everyone because she didn't know her lines. Apparently Blake was very self-conscious about how long it took her to learn lines (according to West, she was already having issues with her memory in general- she was much older than the rest of the cast when the show filmed) and this public beratement really hurt her confidence. West says it was the one and only time during the show's three year run that he had to "throw his weight around" on the set. West described a number of other issues as well, including some of the fight choreography being a little too real on Preminger's end.

The next time Mr. Freeze was needed as a villain they got Eli Wallach instead.

Updated On: 1/31/14 at 01:58 PM

[CarlosAlberto]

Posted: 1/31/14 at 2:13pm

He is infamous with this kind of behavior. It's a wonder any actor worked with him more than once, but some did like Jill Haworth (Exodus, In Harm's Way) and Diahann Carroll (Carmen Jones, Porgy & Bess, Hurry Sundown).

During the filming of Hurry, Sundown he gave Faye Dunaway hell, she signed on to a seven year contract with him and after filming she paid out of pocket to get out of it.
Pamela Tiffin also suffered his wrath when she auditioned for the role of the fallen sister in The Cardinal. During her audition she felt she couldn't do anything right by him and he berated her and yelled the infamous, "Vat are you doing?!!!"...the role wound up going to Carol Lynley, who also wound up working for him in Bunny Lake is Missing.

[MrMidwest]

Posted: 1/31/14 at 2:45pm

"But Otto Preminger was not the perfect mentor for an Iowa girl thrust into the spotlight. "He was a charming conversationalist at dinner and a sadist on the set," Seberg says. That quote may be from life; I had dinner with him many times and visited many of his sets, and it is absolutely true. He specialized in humiliating women in front of his crews.

For "Saint Joan," Seberg was actually tied to a stake for the burning scene and, in the take used in the movie, was accidentally burned. "Why was Life magazine there to document the day I was burned?" she asks (for let us adopt the convention that the dialogue is Seberg's own words). Did Otto stage the accident for publicity? Nobody knows. But Otto was a master of publicity, and by the time "Saint Joan" opened the whole world was waiting, with knives sharpened, to attack her performance - not because they hated her, but because it was such a temptation to prove Preminger wrong."

http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/from-the-journals-of-jean-seberg-1996

[strummergirl]

Posted: 1/31/14 at 3:05pm

Yeah this was not simply your run of the mill asshole director. He was pretty notorious. It's hard to imagine the size of his megalomania if his creative peak were in the height of New American Cinema/United Artists than the studio system, his ego was already big enough.

[henrikegerman]

Posted: 1/31/14 at 3:14pm

And many worked with him again and again.

In addition to In Harm's Way and Exodus, Jill Haworth also worked with Preminger on The Cardinal. Jean Seberg worked with him on Saint Joan and Bonjour Tristesse. Of course, Dandridge, Poitier, Bailey and Carroll teamed with him on both Carmen Jones and Porgy & Bess. Gene Tierney was in Where the Sidewalk Ends, Laura and Advice and Consent (also with Franchot Tone, who was also in In Harm's Way). Robert Mitchum was in Angel Face and River of No Return. Linda Darnell was in Forever Amber and Fallen Angel (and they certainly didn't get along)

Dana Andrews worked with Preminger at least five time: Laura, Where the Sidewalk Ends, Fallen Angel, In Harm's Way and Daisy Kenyon.

Which brings up the possibility for a very loopy musical farce. In the first act we see Preminger working with Crawford on Daisy Kenyon. In the second act Preminger teams with Dunaway on Hurry, Sundown.
Updated On: 1/31/14 at 03:14 PM

[EricMontreal22]

Posted: 1/31/14 at 6:01pm

Release his Porgy and Bess already!

Bunny Lake is Missing is an underated film -- one I only learned about because The Zombies (my fave Brit Invasion band) had a cameo in it and their song Just Out of Reach was used in the trailer (they also did a hilarious, complete with an Otto spoken part, radio version of the song called Come On Time which I sadly can't find online, but changed the lyrics about how audiences had to come on time -- yes they pulled a Psycho and wouldn't let people come midway through the movie.)

Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quP1R4E2ug0

[Borstalboy]

Posted: 1/31/14 at 7:40pm

He apparently once went up to Jean Seberg on BONJOUR TRISTESSE, put his face right in front of hers and shouted, "RELAX!!!"

Austin Pendleton once told a story about how he was on SKIDOO and Preminger started to yell at him about "You don't even know what you are doing!" to which Pendleton cried, "You're right! I don't know what I'm doing! Why don't you help me?" After that, Preminger relented and then proceeded to "teach me everything I know about acting for the camera."

Anyone seen TELL ME YOU LOVE ME JUNIE MOON with Liza Minnelli being forced to undress in a graveyard before getting battery acid poured on her face? Crazy movie.

[Mr Roxy]

Posted: 1/31/14 at 8:14pm

Supposedly he treated Tom Tryon like crap

Updated On: 2/2/14 at 08:14 PM

[Borstalboy]

Posted: 1/31/14 at 8:38pm

And when Tryon became a successful author, congratulated himself for harassing him away from acting forever.

[MrMidwest]

Posted: 2/2/14 at 10:24am

In one of the tvlegends interviews on youtube, Diahann Carroll talked about how she wasn't scared of him because her parents were incredibly strict. So she would just carefully observe him on the set and try to figure out what the eff was wrong with him.

There's another story about Otto telling Robert Mitchum to slap Jean Simmons again and again on the set of Angel Face until Mitchum walked over to him and slapped Otto hard as hell.

[CarlosAlberto]

Posted: 2/2/14 at 11:10am

I've seen interviews with Diahann Carroll discussing her relationship with Preminger. She has alway been an extremely self assured woman - - - her confidence was instilled in her from her a very early age by her parents. She has never been one to be easily intimidated by anyone including the infamously tyrannical Otto Preminger. You just don't try to mess with Diahann Carroll.

[henrikegerman]

Posted: 2/2/14 at 2:36pm

"Anyone seen TELL ME YOU LOVE ME JUNIE MOON with Liza Minnelli being forced to undress in a graveyard before getting battery acid poured on her face? Crazy movie."

Yes! @hen I was very young. And it was very disturbing.

[MrMidwest]

Posted: 2/10/14 at 2:18pm

Very interesting discussion about Daisy Kenyon, Anatomy of a Murder, and Laura (you have to skip ahead):
http://directorsclubpodcast.com/post/75704572600/episode67