Tonight on Arte: A movie classic that almost never got released!

[In1945RobertWilderispreparing[1945წელსვართრობერტუაილდერიემზადებაwritten on the windThe novel is adapted from the case of Zachary Smith Reynolds, the heir to a financial empire, who suffered a tobacco-related bullet to the head when he was only 20 years old.

No one has ever been convicted of the incident, which has been ruled a suicide, despite the suspicions of some of Reynolds’ relatives. Studio RKO bought the rights to Wilder’s book before it was released in order to make it into a movie.

In 1946, the novel was published, but its adaptation was no longer relevant to RKO, which sold the rights to International Pictures, an entirely new firm founded barely two years earlier. On October 1, 1946, International Pictures merged with Universal Pictures to form Universal-International, and once again Written on the Wind was shelved.

Indeed, it would be necessary to wait until 1955 for the studio to revive the idea under the impulse of producer Albert Zugsmith. Director Douglas Sirk has just shot the George Zuckerman-penned western Taza, Son of Cochise, with Rock Hudson in Hindi! Zugsmith wants to reunite the trio for Written on the Wind, but the family of Zachary Smith Reynolds is worried: they’re threatening to sue.

Universal is all about action! Reynolds was renamed Seals Hadley, a tobacco company for oil and North Carolina for Texas. Reynolds’ wife, named Libby in real life and Lilith in the novel, is Lucy, and the character goes from actress to secretary.

All of these modifications were repeatedly subjected to the motion picture production code (better known by its nickname “the Hayes code”) before release, to ensure that everything was legally and morally sound.

Finally, on December 25, 1956, Written on the Wind was released, avoiding a lawsuit and becoming a hit, the best opening day for a Universal film at the time. In total, it reaches $4.3 million in revenue, adjusted for 2023, $47 million. great success

As a result, the Sirk-Zuckerman-Hudson trio would meet again the following year at La Ronde de l’aube.

The Zachary Reynolds case also inspired two feature films: Sing Sinner Sing (1933) and Reckless (1935), which came out before the novel was written.