URL:http://www.cinemavii.com/dizozza/haley.html

Deborah Kerr, as Karen Holmes, was selected for the part after almost every other top Hollywood name had been reported as seeking it. After more than fifty actresses tested for the envied role of Alma, Prewitt's girlfriend, Columbia contractee Donna Reed won the part. Frank Sinatra's persistence in applying for the off-beat role of private Maggio (to the extent of traveling 27,000 miles from Africa and back for screen test), got him the part of the violent and funny and sour Italian-American. Stage and screen actor Ernest Borgnine, who had recently appeared on Broadway with Helen Hayes in "Mrs. McThing," was signed for the role of Fatso Judson, the sadistic sergent of the stockade. Philip Ober, film actor and a familiar figure on Broadway for more than twenty years, played Captain Holmes, the pompous commanding officer whose infidelity caused his wife - Deborah Kerr - to seek romance with the sergeant - Burt Lancaster.

In addition to the wardrobe and weapons, tons of equipment such as generators, cameras, lights, reflectors, cables, sound truck, etc., were shipped several days before the personnel flew out from Hollywood to ensure they would arrive in time for immediate shooting. One of the most exciting action sequences ever filmed by Hollywood cameras was the strafing of Schofield Barracks by Japanese Zeros. This re-creation of a phase of the attack on Oahu, in which the Army installation was riddled by machine gun fire as the Japanese pilots made their bombing run on the Navy ships, was photographed at the locale of the disaster as described by novelist Jones.
A group of planes of the 199th Squadron, Hawaii Air National Guard, bearing the familiar red "meatball" insignia of the Japanese fighters, participated in the simulated attacks and the mock battle scenes featuring Burt Lancaster, the featured players, and the men of the Hawaii Infantry Training Center.

The stars of From Here to Eternity played significantly different roles from their accepted screen personalities. Burt Lancaster, a war veteran of three years' service with the famous Fifth Army, played an Army man for the first time in seventeen starring film roles. Despite his Army service, he had to learn to use the outmoded equipment of the pre-Pearl Harbor Army as though he were a recruit.

Deborah Kerr completely changed her pace for this part as the captain's wife. Kerr's hair was restyled by Columbia's hairddressing expert Helen Hunt, and the color was changed from her normal ginger red to topaz blonde. She also worked at losing her British accent with a voice coach who specialized in this type of control. Movie audiences, who for the first time saw Miss Kerr in a bathing suit and shorts, found the charming lady's figure a pleasant sight indeed.
Almost thirty years later, the December 11th, 1981 "Rambling Reporter" column of the trade paper THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER declared that Deborah Kerr's surfside smooch in FROM HERE TO ETERNITY with Burt Lancaster was the most famous love scene in film histry. Deborah remarked, "All I remember is that after a full day's filming of the scene, with all that sand in my bathing suit, my skin was rubbed raw !"

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Schofield Barracks under attack in 1953's Best Picture, From Here to Eternity. According to Kaylie Jones in an interview, the daughter of From Here to Eternity author James Jones, the soldiers were having breakfast and eagerly awaiting their extra rations of milk - a Sunday morning treat at Schofield - when the Japanese struck. Burt Lancaster, as Sgt. Milton Warden, sprang into action, manning a machine gun atop the Barracks and firing at the attacking Zeros. Eternity was shot on location at Schofield, where novelist James Jones was actually based in 1941. However, Jones bunked at D Quad, while director Fred Zinnemann's crew shot at C Quad, which is more open and has better light and aesthetics (e.g., palms). (There is a dispute as to whether or not the Japanese actually bombed and strafed Schofield Barracks. What is now Wheeler Air force Base,adjacent to Schofield, was a prime target, because the Japanese wanted to knock out the U.S. planes based there. Some contend that Schofield was hit by accidental fire aimed at Wheeler).

From Here to Eternity (1953), about the peacetime Army on Oahu and culminating with the Japanese suprise attack, is one of only two Pacific movies to win Academy Awards for Best Picture (the other film is Mutiny on the Bounty [1935]). Eternity won a number of additional oscars, including Fred Zinnemann for directing, Daniel Taradash for screenwriting, and Burnett Guffey for cinematography. Burt Lancaster, Montgomery Clift, and Deborah Kerr all received best acting nominations, while Donna Reed (as a hooker!) and Frank Sinatra won Best Supporting Actor/Actress Oscars. (James Jones' daughter Kaylie Jones [in an interview] claims that rumors of Sinatra winning his big comeback role via the help of gangster connections are unfounded. Sinatra, whose career was then in decline, lobbied actively for the part as Private Maggio, the Italian-American from New York, a role that Hoboken-born Sinatra knew he could play convincingly, which he amply proved in screen tests and in an Academy Award-winning performance of a lifetime).

PHOTOPLAY: "A good picture, quick and to the point." - THE HUCKSTERS -US 1947/115m/bw - MGM (Arthur Hornblow Jnr.)

Back from the war, an advertising executive finds it difficult to pur up with his clients' tantrums. Good topical entertainment which still entertains and gives a good impression of its period. w Luther Davis, novel Frederic Wakeman d Jack Conway ph Harold Rosson m Lennie Hayton. CAST: Clark Gable + Deborah Kerr, Ava Gardner, Sidney Greenstreet, Adolphe Menjou, Keenan Wynn, Edward Arnold, and Aubrey Mather

URL:http://www.bmonster.com/cult33.html

THE KING AND I Produced by Wilder's collaborator Charles Brackett, written by Ernest Lehman from Rodgers and Hammerstein's stage hit, and choreographed by Jerome Robbins, The King and I boasts an impressive set of credentials, let down only by Lang's emphasis on size rather than style. But Yul Brynner gives an outstanding display of regal insecurity and Deborah Kerr is well cast as Anna who tries to bring Victorian domesticity to the barbarian court of Siam. U.S.A. 1956/Dir Walter Lang. With Rita Moreno as TupTim

Yul Brynner had an interesting role in "The Journey" ('59), which purported to be on the side of the 1956 Hungarian revolt against Soviet domination. THE JOURNEY was shot and edited in such a way that it could, with a few changes, be shown on either side of the Iron Curtain. Brynner's role was that of a Soviet officer who suspects Soviet culture is more primitive than that of the West; falls for a British aristocrat (Deborah Kerr); and lets her, her lover, and other refugees escape. Brynner's performance is interesting because one can tell, from the way he speaks the lines, he was personally aware of the implications of the film's politics, and of the hazards of the political tight-rope director Anatole Litvak had chosen to walk. The only good role Mr. Brynner has had since THE JOURNEY is that of the leader in THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN. Also note this: photography is Brynner's major hobby ( he was the official on-set still photographer on THE KING AND I; he shot hundreds of stills on THE TEN COMMANDMENTS and GOODBYE AGAIN ).

"The Most Beautiful Face in the Whole of England" URL:http://www.classicimages.com/1998/may98/patriciacotten.html

PATRICIA MEDINA COTTON: The Interview URL:http://www.classicimages.com/1998/may98/patriciacinterview.html