The seven deadly sins of Hollywood (1957)

ON LOCATION, EUROPE She had even kicked over the traces to the extent of going to a bull-fight. I expected her to be revolted by something so alien to the old school and the Old Vic. But, no, Miss Bloom was enthralled. "The matadors," she sighed, "they are so beautiful. It would be terrible if it were done by an ugly man, but they are marvellous, the way they move, like dancers. Of course it is sad about the bulls, but I was so fascinated I didn't think about them." Robert Rossen, who once made a film called The Brave Bulls, was not going to the bull-fights. " I worry too much about the bull-fighters," he said, "now that I know them personally. No, I've never worried about the bulls." But Rossen had other worries, too. "Costs run into thousands every day," he said. "It will be a two-hour-twenty-minute film. It would have cost twice as much to make in England. Of course I would have liked to make it in the actual locales in Greece, but they don't have enough technicians there." He interrupted to issue directions to his players: "Come on, you're suppose to hit her. Hit her." "But we're only rehearsing," complained the actress who had to be hit. " Can't we save that for the take? " It seemed they couldn't. Rossen is a painstaking worker, a stickler for realism. He built roads to take his unit to certain locations ; he levelled the top of a hill with dynamite so he could build on it; he took Alexander the Great up mountains and down into rivers. And in the wake of Alexander came other Hollywood companies. Now that Italy has become so expensive, Hollywood has discovered that the sun also shines in Spain. 81