Behind the Scenes: “Man’s Favorite Sport” (1963)

Should have been, as you might have guessed, Cary Grant (Charade, 1963) in the lead. Should have featured, which you won’t have guessed, Ursula Andress (She, 1965). Should have run, which you’d be amazed to learn, for 145 minutes, almost as long as your standard epic. Should have appeared, like Hatari! (1962), under the Paramount banner.

In fact, the most likely studio destination was Columbia. Hawks’s agent Charles Feldman had  spent 16 months trying to thrash out a very good deal for his client. Feldman, who owned the rights to Casino Royale, was also keen on Hawks directing a James Bond picture. That got as far as discussing Cary Grant as the handsome spy and Hawks’ enlisting the aid of his favorite screenwriter Leigh Brackett (Hatari!).

But instead of moving studios, Hawks decided to stay put, sitting on a three-picture deal worth a hefty $200,000 plus a 50 per cent profit share. First item on the new agenda could have been reuniting Rio Bravo (1959) alumni John Wayne and Dean Martin for The Yukon Trail. But that was before Hawks expressed interest in a romantic short story, The Girl Who Almost Got Away, published in Cosmopolitan magazine, and an ideal fit for Cary Grant.

But Grant, something of the entrepreneur himself, would only sign up if Hawks in turn agreed to direct one of the actor’s pet projects, The Great Sebastian. But the director didn’t like the idea of being a gun for hire and Grant’s attention meanwhile had wandered in the direction of Charade. Rock Hudson, borrowed from Universal, was seen as an ideal replacement. For the female lead Hawks initially enthused about Joanna Moore (Walk on the Wild Side, 1962) until he chanced upon Paula Prentiss (Where the Boys Are, 1960), an MGM contract player.

Paramount balked at a relative unknown. Hawks balked at anyone balking at his choice and switched the project to Universal. While toying with Casino Royale, Hawks had a sneak preview of Dr No (1962) and espied a natural for the second female lead in Ursula Andress. But her management team reckoned the Bond movie would open bigger doors. Instead, Hawks plumped for Austrian blonde Maria Perschy (The Password Is Courage, 1962). Charlene Holt (If A Man Answers, 1962) made such an impression on Hawks that she not only won the part of Rock Hudson’s fiancée but the role of regular girlfriend to the director and parts in his next two pictures.

Leigh Brackett  was brought in to pep up the original script by John Fenton Murray (It’s Only Money, 1962) and Steve McNeil (Red Line 7000, 1965). Unusually, she was rewriting on the hoof, earning $1,000 a week to refashion the lines scene by scene as production unfolded. Everything except the opening scene set in San Francisco was shot on the Universal backlot. Even then, neither Hudson nor Prentiss was transported to San Francisco, their close-ups while driving cars filmed at the studio and inserted as process shots. Hawks didn’t leave the studio either, entrusting that initial footage to associate producer Paul Helmick and cinematographer Russell Harlan.

Like Otto Preminger, Hawks liked a lot of takes. Paula Prentiss didn’t, in part because she felt he was trying to mold her into a screwball comedy heroine of the past, and in part because every take not printed impinged on her confidence. Although Hawks lacked the reputation as a bully of the Otto Preminger variety, nonetheless the inexperienced Prentiss found herself in tears more than once. Cary Grant dropped by one time for a friendly chat. He was made welcome. Angie Dickinson, expecting a similar welcome, received a curt put-down, Hawks making it clear he preferred as a brunette.

While the credit sequence by photographer Don Ornitz was deemed sexist since it comprised 33 models in sports or beach gear, it was actually the opposite because the women were proving how superlative they could be at sports generally considered the preserve of men. But there was no doubt the reaction Hawks expected when he spent $20,000 on black scuba outfits for Prentiss and Perschy, using molds made from their bodies to achieve the skin-tight effect. Hawks was notoriously slow, the picture taking three and a half months.

The initial version of the film attracted at a sneak preview the most positive responses the studio had ever received. The only problem was – it ran 145 minutes, considered an impossible length for a light romantic comedy. Although the next version was shorter, the audience response was decidedly worse. Even so, Universal insisted on further cuts until the movie came in at the two-hour-mark.

Not everyone went along with the official Hawks version of events. Others remembered the response to the various cuts not being so different. The film wasn’t released until six months later and there is no evidence that Hawks fought hard to retain his edit. Although he would later complain that the movie was “sabotaged,” that may have been his automatic default position once the movie proved a relative commercial failure, with only $2.35 million in U.S. rentals

Leigh Brackett had more right to feel disgruntled. She was denied a credit by the Writers Guild of America who contended her work was a polish rather than an original contribution.

I have to say I’m out of step with some of the critical opinion. Molly Haskell reckoned the film was actually some kind of Adam and Eve deal with Hudson “a virgin who has written a how-to book on sex while harbouring a deep fastidious horror of it.” The Haskin critique allows that fish are phallic symbols, therefore giving sexual credence to the scene about learning to handle a fish.

It might just be more straightforward to say that, of course, this isn’t as good as Bringing Up Baby but then, nothing ever was, and just enjoy what Hawks did manage to conjure up with very likeable leads.

SOURCES: Todd McCarthy, Howard Hawks, The Grey Fox of Hollywood (Grove Press, 1997), p595-603; Joseph McBride (editor), Focus on Howard Hawks (Englewood Cliffs); Molly Haskell, “Howard Hawks: Masculine Feminine,” Film Comment, March-April 1974.